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Take the square

There’s Nothing Funny About Oppression: A Message to Those Who Turn Resistance Into a Comedy Routine. 10 Everyday Acts of Resistance That Changed the World by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson. The Arab spring of 2011 has already changed the region and the world.

Ordinary people have lost their fear and shattered the perception that their rulers are invincible. Whatever happens next, the changes across the region in the first few months of 2011 will prove historic. Bottom: January 25, 2011: An anti-government protester defaces a picture of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak in Alexandria, 140 miles north of Cairo.

In Tunisia, the now famous “jasmine revolution” began with protests in December, triggered by the self-immolation of a 26-year-old vegetable seller, Mohammed Bouazizi.
Are We Witnessing the Start of a Global Revolution?
For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive… The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination… The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening… That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing… The nearly universal access to radio, television and increasingly the Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions and envy that can be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or religious passions.

These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches…
» 99 percenters, capitalism, and natural slaves Early Retirement Extreme: — The choice nobody ever told you about. If you're new here, this blog will give you the tools to become financially independent in 5 years. The wiki page gives a good summary of the principles of the strategy.

The key to success is to run your personal finances much like a business, thinking about assets and inventory and focusing on efficiency and value for money. Not just any business but a business that's flexible, agile, and adaptable. Conversely most consumers run their personal finances like an inflexible money-losing anti-business always in danger on losing their jobs to the next wave of downsizing.
Welcome to the Global Network, an invitation to all the assemblies. We invite everybody to share this text all around the world via mails, feedbacks, websites… Dear comrades of the global change, We are about 400 people in squares all around the world, from Madrid to Tel Aviv, from New York to Rio, we share strategies and informations in order to export the pacific revolution and coordinate global actions as the 15 of October.

We make the link between our local assemblies and the other assemblies all around the world via this network and one of our main project is to create the tools to a global coordination inter-assemblies.
Greece erupts into flames during “mother of all strikes”
Athens billows in smoke and teargas once more as hundreds of thousands take to the streets during some of the largest protests in modern Greek history.

Photograph: Milos Bicanski Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets all over Greece yesterday in the first day of a truly massive 48-hour general strike. Dubbed “the mother of all strikes” by the leading daily Ta Nea, it is the single biggest walkout since the beginning of the crisis almost two years ago.
Violence Never An Option Against Peaceful Protests. Law enforcement officials broke up the Oakland offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street protests this week with tear gas and, some protestors say, rubber bullets.

An Iraq veteran who was hit in the head with a projectile is currently in critical condition with a fractured skull. Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way Foundation, said: “Violence should never be used against a peaceful protest. While most law enforcement officials across the country have done their job in ensuring public safety while letting Occupy protestors exercise their constitutional rights, this week’s events in Oakland are disturbing. Political leaders and law enforcement in Oakland and across the country must show restraint as Americans peacefully invoke their right to protest and to speak out about their vision for our country’s future.

The riots of summer 2011 – Just criminals?
Listen to the audio from this session Chairing the third and final session at this Academy seminar on the riots, Professor Ted Cantle CBE, Executive Chair of the Institute of Community Cohesion, began by reading a newspaper quote about the looting of a shipwreck on Sidmouth beach in 2007.

There was no mention of “feral youths” or “criminality”, illustrating the point that the mostly likely looters are simply people who happen to be at the right place at the right time – a point made earlier. “Are we all potential rioters, looters or criminals?” He asked.
Call to action: #RobinHood global march on October 29. On the eve of the G20 in France, let the people rise up and demand the imposition of a 1% #ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades.

Adbusters, the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine that made the initial call for the occupation of Wall Street, is calling for another global day of action on Saturday, October 29. Here is an excerpt from their rallying cry: This is a proposal for the general assemblies of the Occupy movement.On October 29, on the eve of the G20 Leaders Summit in France, let’s the people of the world rise up and demand that our G20 leaders immediately impose a 1%#ROBINHOOD tax on all financial transactions and currency trades.

The year 2011 marks the end of the End of History. When the system forces ordinary people to become revolutionaries, you know you’re no longer at the End of History.

You’re at the very edge of it. Traducción en castellano aquí. Tradução em português aqui. The Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions.
Resolution by the popular assembly of Syntagma square. From yesterday on, definitively and irreversibly, the ‘Communist Party’ is no more than a barrier against the attempt to bury the parliamentary corpse.

Via Occupied London and Casa Nosotros After Varkiza [1], the Polytechnic [2], the Chemistry School (1979) [3], December [2008] [4] and a number of other instances, reality once again came to reveal the role of the Party that systematically betrays popular struggles. And if up to this point they strangled, with their political offices any generalised and determined strike during all these years, if they smeared all revolts as a “provocation”, henceforth history shows this was not “mere political errors” but a co-ordinated and conscious stance defending parliamentary dictatorship and the capitalist financial and social relationships.
An Inversion of Revolutionary Perspective.

Cracks break with the logic of capitalist society.

To that logic, we oppose a different way of doing things ... We want to break the system, the social cohesion that holds us in place and obliges us to act in certain ways. Dignity is a cutting edge shearing through the tight, tough, compact weave of capitalist domination. Dignity is an icebreaker, its sharp bows cutting into an enormous mass of compacted ice, the apparently unbreakable horror that we call capitalism. Dignity is a pickax wielded against the encroaching walls that threaten to crush the whole of humanity.
Do You Do Nothing or Do You Resist?

Revolt!
Revolt, if it is to be successful, must come from the mind; a growing unease and dissatisfaction with things as they are. Revolt may be leaderless, but it cannot be idea-less. Revolt, if one examines the idea, is not a new or unusual thing, merely a reversal of direction. We do it often, sometimes silently, sometimes angrily, but we do it.

Lecture about GlobalRevolution by Slovenian philosopher dr. Igor Pribac: “Are we in the same boat?”
About author We are just like you, citizens of the world fed up with the critical situation and we believe a real change can be achieved through the coordination of non violent actions and self-managed alternatives around the world. There must be a better way of dealing with the survival and enjoyment of our life, we believe in consensus and in non-hierarchical organization. We believe that another world is possible, where nobody has to die of hunger while others throw food away.
The spiritual crisis of humanity and the endless struggle. From Europe to the world, it is time to break the chains of weariness and rise to the challenge of our times.

The future of humanity depends on it. The capitalist endgame that is being played out in Greece – and Europe more broadly – is a microcosm of the challenges facing humanity as a whole. As the world economy teeters on the brink of collapse, we are reminded every day that Europe’s crisis is much more than merely a financial, economic or even political crisis. At rock bottom, the tragedy of the failing European project is a symptom of the profound spiritual crisis facing humanity today.